


stolen time, stockpiled by thieves

by kickedshins



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Could Be Canon, Established Relationship, Fluff, Introspection, Juno Steel Feels Like He's Getting Old, Juno Steel Needs a Hug, Other, i dont know guys theyre just in love and shit, like theyre just chilling and having a conversation about What Could Have Been and its cute, mildly angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22913698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: “You’re more than your past, Juno.”Juno feels supremely uncomfortable. His hand itches to slip his eyepatch over his good eye simply so that he doesn’t have to look at Peter Nureyev’s uncharacteristically earnest stare. Instead, he grumbles, “I feel like we’re not talking about essays on Terran playwrights anymore.”“Maybe you’re not. I know that my intentions were solely focused on how you scored a seventy-three on your highschool essay on the themes of The Tempest.”Juno chuckles into his drink. “It was a sixty-eight, and it was on Midsummer Night’s Dream, actually.”orJuno and Nureyev discuss what life might have been like if they found each other in a different universe.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 8
Kudos: 78





	stolen time, stockpiled by thieves

**Author's Note:**

> im sixteen and he's crisising over being 40 so that was fun to write

“You know,” Juno says one night when it’s an hour too late and he’s had a drink too many and hopes he won’t be able to remember this in the morning, “we could have had it all. In another world, Nureyev, we could have had it all.”

“Whatever do you mean, Juno?”

He sighs and shifts forward a bit more in his chair, finger trailing the rim of his glass. He doesn’t look up. “I mean that in another world we coulda just… had it all. You get what I mean? Away from all of this. Away from a life of crime—”

“Are you saying you don’t like being part of the Aurinko crime family?”

“It’s not that!” Juno’s quick to protest, partially because he’s pretty sure Buddy has most areas of the ship bugged, and partially because he’s pretty sure Vespa has the rest of it bugged. “No, it’s not that at all. It’s, y’know, better than dying stranded and alone in the middle of the Martian desert, or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Peter echoes, and Juno wants to hit something, just a little, because he used to be so articulate, dammit, even when he was drunk as all hell, but he is… Well, Juno Steel is not as young as he used to be.

“What I’m saying,” Juno continues, pressing on a little harder, “is that there’s– Hey, Nureyev, do you believe in parallel universes?”

“Do I what?” Peter looks at him with bemusement, like Juno’s a jigsaw to sort out. Juno sort of hopes Peter never manages to configure the whole puzzle. Part because he likes the chase and part because he worries that when Peter places that final piece, when he finally sees Juno for all that he is and nothing more and nothing less, he’ll get bored. He’ll leave, he’ll go on to find a prettier puzzle, a younger puzzle, a different puzzle.

And part of him knows this is probably not likely, because hasn’t he said that he makes Peter Nureyev feel? Hasn’t he said that that’ll get this absolute fool of a brilliant thief killed one day?

Juno himself doesn’t expect to go out any way other than dramatically and for someone else, and no matter how many speeches Alessandra Strong gives to him on the downsides of self-sacrifice, there are some things that are simply inevitabilities. And, complex aside, it’s not a question of if he would die for Rita. It’s not a question of if he would die for Peter. It’s just a question of when. 

Instead of elaborating on the parallel universes bit, Juno says, “This is all stolen time.”

“Mmm,” Peter says, copying Juno’s motion and circles the rim of his own glass. Juno’s eye tracks Peter’s finger, long and slender, well-trained at leaving a pocket light and a target none the wiser. “But we’re making a living in thievery, now, are we not?”

“We are,” Juno admits. “Stolen time, stockpiled by thieves, worth its weight in gold.”

“My, you’re poetic, little lady.”

“Really? My ninth-grade teacher always said my prose was lacking.”

Peter smiles a little sadly, and Juno knows that Peter would never let his facade slip out of control, so he knows that he’s letting Juno see this sadness. “You’re more than your past, Juno.”

Juno feels supremely uncomfortable. His hand itches to slip his eyepatch over his good eye simply so that he doesn’t have to look at Peter Nureyev’s uncharacteristically earnest stare. Instead, he grumbles, “I feel like we’re not talking about essays on Terran playwrights anymore.”

“Maybe you’re not. I know that my intentions were solely focused on how you scored a seventy-three on your highschool essay on the themes of _The Tempest_.”

Juno chuckles into his drink. “It was a sixty-eight, and it was on _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , actually.”

“My deepest apologies, ma’am. If we spirits have offended, and all that.”

“I’d insult you charmingly with a witty reference to the play, but I never actually read it.”

“And you wonder why you scored a sixty-eight,” Peter mutters. Juno’s not really sure when he started thinking of Peter as Peter and not as Nureyev, but he supposes that they’re two different people, and that Peter Nureyev has a lot of layers that may or may not ever get peeled away, and hopefully this Peter is the real Peter.

Juno wouldn’t know, of course. The man is a fantastic actor, not to mention the fact that Juno’s judgment is significantly impaired due to alcohol and emotion, neither of which he seems to stomach very well these days. All that he can do is hope that this _is_ the real Peter Nureyev, that he’s being honest with Juno, that this isn’t just another mask to wear until the strings holding it up get a bit too itchy against the smooth skin of his face.

Hope makes Juno uncomfortable.

The other option, of course, is to trust him, but that makes Juno even more uncomfortable, because trust implies some sort of reciprocal action, some sort of close-your-eyes-and-fall-and-be-caught, and it’s because of his stupid fucking _trust_ that Juno can already only see out of one, so he supposes he’ll have to settle for settling. Hope it is, then. 

“Juno.” Peter says his name like it’s a word worth saying.

“Peter?” Juno says his name like it’s a city worth settling down in. 

“You never finished your point about parallel universes.”

Juno sighs. “Did I even have a point, Nureyev? I’m drunk, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I had, actually. I’ve got a very keen sense of perception.”

“Don’t I know it,” Juno grumbles, as if someone knowing that another person loves them is a situation deserving of a complaint. 

“Parallel universes, Juno.”

“Right. I just— So, imagine that there’s this world, right? And it’s got, what, crime and Mars and Hyperion City and me and you and Rita and Mick Mercury and everybody else in it. This world is, y’know, our world. The one we live in. Life.”

“I am, unfortunately, aware of my own existence,” Peter jokes, and he plays it well enough that it can be a joke if Juno wants and it can be an outstretched hand if he doesn’t but Juno is a little too far gone for mindgames and the confusing fractals that make up Peter Nureyev, always going inwards, never stopping, breaking away into thousands of components and parts and Juno might go insane if he tries too hard to find where it all starts. So. Juno elects to let it stay a very bad joke.

“But in a parallel universe, it’s mostly all the same, but there’s something small that’s been changed, like, I don’t know, if I was the one who ended up as an agent of Dark Matters instead of Sasha Wire.”

“Or Rex Glass?” Peter says.

“Go lick your wounds elsewhere, Nureyev. I’m monologuing.”

“My apologies,” Peter says with a smile. “I wasn’t aware I had wounds to which I must attend.”

“I cut deep, Glass, I know I do.”

“I’m certain of that,” he responds, voice nearly a purr.

Juno fumbles for his drink. 

“As I was saying, _Ransom_ ,” Juno continues, throwing a barb at Peter’s complete inability to commit fully to the Aurinko crime family, because Juno simply can’t let this whole trust thing go, and, yeah, it’s entirely hypocritical, but Juno’s never considered himself any sort of paragon. He’d object to the title of martyr, too, because that implies some sort of virtuosity, some sort of moral purity. Juno would consider himself many things—a smartass, a typically decent Private I., a fool who falls in love far too hard and far too fast and without any forethought to how feeling might lead to a missing eye or a dead sibling or even just Rita’s insistence that he _take better care of yourself, Mistah Steel_ —but pure, he thinks, is pushing it. “Parallel universes. Maybe there’s one out there where everything is the same except for that we’re, I dunno, normal.”

Peter Nureyev’s laugh is clear as a bell and nothing short of devilishly angelic. And, no, that doesn’t make any sense at all, but neither does speeding through space on a ship full of intergalactic criminals with hair the color of art supplies and eyes hungrier than a Martian rabbit, and Juno’s certainly in love, and love makes his brain come up with a whole clusterfuck of things that don’t make sense, like trusting Peter Nureyev, or at least having hope in a future with him, so he thinks he can let a borderline disgustingly melodramatic descriptor slide.

“Juno Steel,” he sighs, because why would Peter Nureyev ever say anything normally when he could make it as dramatic as possible?, “I think it would take more than just one change to get us to a world like that. A parallel universe is a deviation, not an impossibility, yes?”

“As always, Nureyev, you’d be correct.”

“As always! Why, this lady knows how to compliment.”

“This lady knows how to flatter an easily flatterable man,” Juno corrects.

“I do,” Peter says.

“You what?”

He takes a pause and ponders the space between them. “Believe. In a parallel universe where we’re not subsisting on stolen time.”

“What do you think it’s like?” Juno doesn’t mean for his question to come out so vulnerable, but it does.

“I think,” Peter begins, careful but far from hesitant, “that we live on Earth. I think that in this universe, enough has changed that I feel alright confined to one planet. With frequent vacations, obviously,” he’s quick to add.

“Obviously.”

“You’re still a Private Investigator—”

“Private Investigator, c’mon, Nureyev, just say Private Eye, you don't have to be so—”

“You’re still a Private Investigator, Juno, simply because I think that that’s a fair bit more attractive than being police. Wouldn’t you agree? And I’m still a thief, most likely. And we met on a case, I’d assume, where you thought I was the victim, but I was, in fact, the perpetrator of the crime.”

“How dastardly of you.”

“Extremely,” Peter says, placing his hand casually over Juno’s own to prevent him from raising the glass to his lips again. “But you fell in love at first sight and refused to take me in and everything simply snowballed from there.”

“That sounds a far cry from normal.”

Peter considers this for a moment. “Yes.”

“Didn’t you say this was a parallel universe where things were normal? And didn’t you say it was a parallel universe where things were _changed_ ? I’m pretty sure, if my memory serves me correctly, which, I mean, I’m getting old, but I’m not getting _that_ ol—”

“Juno,” Peter says. “You’re not even forty.”

“Forty’s fuckin’ old.”

“Forty is not fucking old,” Peter insists, but he does it in a way that doesn’t seem like he’s insisting, more like he’s stating a fact, but it’s hard for Juno to process this as a fact when he was never really banking on living longer than twenty, so he decides to just drop it. Juno doesn’t want to get into a fight about life and death and the average lifespan of a human being, not to mention the effects that Martian radiation might have had on his internal organs.

“Anyway. I _thought_ you said this was a world where everything was normal and also where everything was changed, and I said that it couldn’t be a world where everything was changed, because that was how I fell in love with you in the real universe, wasn’t it?” He gets a little aggressive. Love’s a battlefield, or whatever. Love’s worth fighting for. Love deserves raised hackles and a sharp voice and he wants to kiss Peter so bad right now but it’s probably not the time because Peter’s opening his mouth, likely to correct Juno, and listening to Peter speak is just as good as making him shut up. Most of the time.

“Firstly, yes, that is how you fell in love with me, and it was certainly the start of how I fell in love with you. Secondly, you’re the one who defined parallel universe as a world with a small thing changed, not me,” Peter says. “And in this one we live on Earth.”

“Planets are, like, objectively not small,” Juno shoots back, just to prove that he can.

Peter gives him a look.

Juno knocks Peter’s hand off of his own and takes a sip of his drink.

“And thirdly, I did not say that everything was normal in this world,” Peter says. He presses a finger quickly to Juno’s nose. Juno bats it away with a feigned grumpiness. “I said it was one where we weren’t subsisting on stolen time.”

“Because in this one you’re _not_ running from the police?”

“Oh, I’m sure I am,” Peter says airily. “I’ve heard Earth’s police is even more incompetent than Mars’, though, so I’m sure we wouldn’t have any issues about time.”

“You’re batshit insane,” Juno laughs.

“And yet,” Peter says, “you’re here with me.”

“Stolen time,” Juno reminds him. “I’d be wasting it if I wasn’t.”

“How lucky are we that we were placed in the one universe where we had to fight for every second we get together. It’d be pretty boring otherwise, don’t you think.”

“I think,” Juno starts, speculative and a little bit desperate and too full of desire for a world that could never be his own, “I think if we were in a different universe—”

Every time Peter Nureyev kisses him, it feels like the first. Strong hands and soft lips and an urgency just below the surface, an urgency that rests between his teeth and his tongue and the way his fingers curl in Juno’s clothing. A whisper that this kiss very well could be their last, but if it’s their last, they’ll make it the best damn kiss the universe has ever seen. Universes, plural. Each and every one of them. 

Juno, despite everything, despite the fact that he worries Peter Nureyev will one day leave him, despite the fact that he’s gone from passably-upstanding citizen to criminal, despite the fact that this is stolen time, no matter how hard they like to pretend that it isn’t, manages to smile.

“I think,” he breathes, “I’m finding out how to be okay with this one.”

**Author's Note:**

> thx for reading ! kudos/comments always appreciated :D find me @ commaperson on twitter!


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